A postal service had been organized by the company, but to many a fort the mail only came once a year, and letters were months old when delivered. Communication was not difficult—that is to say, there were no great physical obstacles, at any rate till the Rocky Mountains were reached; there were rivers navigable by big boats from the Mountains to the Bay, though broken in the east by rapids where the boats had to be hauled up by ropes on the way back; there were easy trails over the prairie—pony and ox carts used to ply between Edmonton and Winnipeg, a thousand miles; and in winter dog sledges and men on snowshoes could glide in all directions over the frozen land; yet the immensity of the distances to be covered made travelling intolerably slow. * * * * * They rarely visited their homes in Scotland, these hardy fur traders. Even those who came down to the forts on Hudson Bay, where the fur bales were loaded in ships for the old country, knew that they could not cross the sea and come back in the same year. And the voyage was perilous as well as long—no one could ever tell how long it might be. The Bay itself, though not free from risk, was the easiest part of the way. Getting into the Straits, and through them, and out at the other end—that was the fearful part of it. The Arctic ice was bad enough by itself; but masses of rocky ice hurled about by furious storms, or tossed to and fro on racing tides, made navigation terrible, and when a blinding fog fell on the turbulent sea the sailors were helpless. Captain Coats, who for twenty-four years commanded ships sailing between England and Hudson Bay, from 1727 to 1751, wrote the story of his experiences for the benefit of his sons, who had taken up his own adventurous trade. “The tides,” he says, are “so violent and surprising, especially when disturbed and distracted by ice, that nothing but experience can comprehend or imagine.” An ordinary spring tide “rises near 30 foot all along the streights,” “boyling up in eddies and whirlpools in a most amazing manner,” and “shattering in shivers immense bodys of ice.” In 1727, near the meridian of Cape Farewell, “two pieces of ice shutt upon us and sunk our ship.” In 1736 he was “entangled in ice which shutt upon us, by the tides only (for it was dead calm) and crushed our sides in, and sunk her in 20 minutes.” A vessel had to leave England by May 20 to be sure of reaching the mouth of Hudson Straits by 6th July, and then the trouble began. One year the captain tried six times to enter the straits, from the 1st to the 12th of July, and had to stand out to sea every time.